.png)
3 hours ago
2
Sam Kerr’s fiance said the footballer was “speaking her truth” when she called a police officer “stupid and white”, a court has heard.
Kerr, 31, the captain of the Australian women’s football team and Chelsea’s star striker, is on trial at Kingston crown court accused of racially aggravated harassment after calling a police officer “fucking stupid and white” when he doubted her claim of being “held hostage” by a taxi driver. She denies the charges.
On Thursday, Kerr’s partner and fiance Kristie Mewis told the court that Kerr was “speaking her truth” after being “treated differently” by officers when she made the comments. She accused them of “gaslighting” the couple after they doubted their account of being “held hostage” in a taxi in the early hours of 30 January 2023.
Mewis, who is pregnant with the couple’s child, was asked by Grace Forbes, who is defending Kerr, about her reaction when Kerr called PC Stephen Lovell “stupid and white”.
“I think that, in that moment, she was speaking her truth in how she was feeling. I think that subconsciously, she felt like she was being treated differently. I’ve seen it a lot,” said Mewis, an American who is also a professional footballer.
She said she had seen Kerr “treated differently multiple times” and later told the court that Kerr had “been treated differently, and spoke to differently, for her whole life. I think that she was feeling the same thing she had felt before”.
Mewis became emotional twice on the witness stand. When asked how she felt in the taxi, which she said was moving “uncontrollably fast” after Kerr got sick out of the window, she teared up and said it “felt like someone else had control over me and that was obviously very scary”.
Later, she was asked to describe Kerr as a person and struggled to hold back tears.Mewis said: “Sam is so loving and she’s so humble. She’s would help anybody, that’s one of the things I love about her so much, how helpful, and loving and humble she is.
“She’s so inspiring, she inspires me everyday. I wouldn’t want anyone else to be the mother of my child.”
Mewis described how she “immediately felt fear for my life” in a locked, speeding taxi. After a night out in London, the pair hailed a black cab back to theior home. During the journey, Mewis said Kerr rolled down the windows of the cab and was sick outside. After this, she said the driver pulled over and “started yelling” before he resumed driving in a reckless manner.
She said she had “never driven in a car that fast before” and “tried everything to get out”. She said, after the “initial shock wore off”, she knew she had to do “something dramatic” to save them. In the course of this, the taxi driver called the police.
“I didn’t know if it was a kidnapping or if we were going to crash,” she said. Mewis said she was “kicking straight out with both feet” and broke the car’s window in a bid to escape before it parked outside Twickenham police station – on the instruction of police who answered the taxi driver’s call.
When they went inside the station, Mewis said the police were “dismissive” of their claims.
“It felt a little bit gaslighting,” she told the court. “Like it would just be easier for them if the whole thing was our fault.”
She said the ordeal they relayed to officers would be “different” when repeated back to them. “The way he would say it back would manipulate it back to us,” she told the court.
Eventually, Kerr paid the driver £900 for the damage. Mewis said they paid the sum because she wanted to “escape the situation” and that Mewis “was trying to make the US football team that summer.
Earlier in the day, Kerr was cross-examined by prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones. He asked her whether she was using Lovell’s “whiteness as an insult”, which she denied.
When pressed again about what “his race had to do with anything”, Kerr said: “I believed it was him using his power and privilege over me because he was accusing me of being something I’m not.”
In a testy exchange, Emlyn Jones said: “Ms Kerr, if I put to you that you’re fucking stupid, that would be bang out of order wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” she responded.
“I’d be insulting you?,” he said.
“Yes. I expressed myself very poorly,” she said.
Kerr was asked why she told Lovell she has “got all the fucking people in the world” and has “fucking Chelsea going on”. She said it was an attempt to “bluff” to “make myself feel protected”.
The trial continues.
